I was not at all shocked with this execution at the time. John died seemingly without much pain. He was effectually hanged, the ro...pe having fixed upon his neck very firmly, and he was allowed to hang near three quarters of an hour; so that any attempt to recover him would have been in vain. I comforted myself in thinking that by giving up the scheme I had avoided much anxiety and uneasiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

John was a very political animal. The thing that politics did and that fame as an entertainer didn't do was provide you with an en...gine for propagating your theories and beliefs. The one thing John would have liked more than anything else was his own political machine. Even though he would profess that politics is bullshit, he just wouldn't call it "politics." He'd call it "peace."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The world values the seer above all men, and has always done so. Nay, it values all men in proportion as they partake of the chara...cter of seers. The Elgin Marbles and a decision of John Marshall are valued for the same reason. What we feel in them is a painstaking submission to facts beyond the author's control, and to ideas imposed upon him by his vision. So with Beethoven's Symphonies, with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations--with any conceivable output of the human mind of which you approve. You love them because you say, "These things were not made, they were seen."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eterni...ty by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

John Brown and Giuseppe Garibaldi were contemporaries not solely in the matter of time; their endeavors as liberators link their n...ames where other likeness is absent; and the peaks of their careers were reached almost simultaneously: the Harper's Ferry Raid occurred in 1859, the raid on Sicily in the following year. Both events, however differing in character, were equally quixotic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »